I’ve posted about Deviated Septum’s Sellout Watch before; it’s a virtual paean to the age-old battle between artistic integrity and the almighty dollar. The almighty dollar usually wins.
I went over to DS today because I wanted to post about the Iron & Wine song (a cover of The Postal Service’s “Such Great Heights”) that plays over a new M&M commercial. But Rod, posting at Deviated Septum, beat me to the punch.
As a long-time fan of Iron & Wine, I found the commercial to be horribly depressing. I can’t say that it is completely disrepectful to the song, but I don’t really need to have my emotional connection to the music to be tainted by images of varicolored M&Ms kaleidoscoping in swirls.
Everyone needs to make a living, of course, and Sam Beam — the talented man behind Iron & Wine — is no exception. I met him a few years ago in Philly when he played at The Fire, the performance space at the Philadelphia Bar and Grille on Girard Avenue. It was an amazing, intimate show in a small space. What made it even more special was that after the show, Sam and his band dropped by the adjoining bar. He could tell, I guess, that my friend and I were fans; he came over to our table and talked to us for about an hour as we worked our way through a few beers.
He was incredibly kind and thoughtful, even asking — believe it or not — my friend and I about the grad school dissertations we were writing. And not just asking superficial questions about our topics, but really delving into the issues (Beam teaches cinematography at a college in Florida, and my friend and I were both writing about photography-related subjects).
It became clear during that conversation that despite the critical success of Beam’s albums, he was not yet lighting his cigarettes with hundred dollar bills; the band was touring the country in a modest van, and Beam seemed a little frustrated by the fact that he wasn’t able to devote more of his time to his music.
Beam said that most of his revenue came through tours rather than record sales. I resolved, after that, to go out to live shows more often. And maybe that is one of the lessons of this M&M debacle — if we don’t want our artists to sell out, then we have to support them by attending their live shows.
If you’ve never heard Iron & Wine, you can check out Sam’s brilliant debut record, The Creek Drank the Cradle, which features lo-fi, softly whispered songs over beautiful guitar and banjo strums. His later albums are great, too, but that first one holds a special place in my heart. Very soon after I first heard it, I knew that it would be one of those “essential albums” in my collection. And no M&M advertisement is going to change that.
If you decide to buy that record online through the Amazon link above, I’ll get a 4% kickback. Which, I guess, makes me a sell-out in my own right. Like I said, the almighty dollar usually wins out in the end.
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